At the start of the week I travelled back down to Verbier from Austria after competing in the Kitzsteinhorn 3*.

It was cool to be in Austria again, I spent a short amount of time up there last year for the Hochfugen 4*, but I didn't really get to see that much of the place as I was sort of just in and out for the comp.

This year I was able to appreciate the place a lot more with less stress about travel and staying alive working off what I learned from last year as well as the advice from others, Cheers for that! Between Obergurgl and Kitzsteinhorn I took a day trip to Kennelbach to visit the Head factory. It was really good to finally meet the guys who are helping me out, after talking by email for so long!

I am really happy with the way things went on comp day.
4 comps in and I was still running with my plan of skiing safe, but I was able to find an interesting line that I really enjoyed riding.
Although I hesitated a lot on my last air, the rest of my run was clean and relatively smooth and I placed 8th out of a field of 31. I am really happy with my result as I wasn’t actually expecting or even planning to place in the top ten.

This result is exactly what I needed, I am now sitting on 1080 points which should already be enough to gain entrance for 4* comps next year. With Roldal and the NZ open still to come before Next Euro winter I will have a bit more freedom to play around!

This leg of the journey was especially cool.
I was staying with Birgit Ertl who also let me use her car to get to the comp, so I saw a bunch more of the area just by driving an hour to and from the mountain. Her car is called Blitzi, which apparently means "little lightning" and he is about 3 meters long and 100% yellow with a LOVE bumper sticker. She stores it in her spare room and you carry it around in a leather satchel.
To get it going you just stand behind and breathe out.
Blitzi is actually a champ though!

Having a sit down rave with 6 people in the back of a friend’s station wagon (pimped to the chin for sleeping) was another highlight. We dubbed it the Passat Party and it is safe to say the official comp after party paled in comparison!

-Photo: The Passat Party-

Comp number 5 and the final comp of my season will be the Roldal 4* in Norway, I haven’t decided how I will approach it yet, but I will be nearly 11 months post op, so my knee should be strong enough to push a little harder.
I will see how the next couple of weeks go before I set my sights on any goals in particular.